In Which I Tell You about Sobekneferu

I believe in knowledge for its own sake. Learning does not have to be useful. Learning reveals to be how incredible this world is; sometimes incredibly awful but also incredibly beautiful. Also, just interesting and quirky.

In furtherance of that idea, I present you with this titular fact: Sobekneferu (whose name means ‘the beauty of Sobek [the crocodile god of the Egyptians]) is the earliest evidenced female pharaoh, ruling in Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty from 1806-1802 BCE. Other women may have come before her, but she is the earliest definitely substantiated. The only statue of her with a head attached was kept in a museum in Berlin and was lost during WWII.

Sobekneferu is, as far as I have been able to discern, the first well-documented female ruler in history. I am certain that others came before her, matriarchal societies have long existed, and Egypt itself has some supposed queens before her. Even so, that is still quite a pedestal to occupy.

There’s our fun fact for the week.

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I have very little else to report this week. The weather has returned to lovely, sunny days and so there has been plenty of reading outside. Very much been enjoying the summer weather, the leisure of the season. I have had occasion to try a couple new recipes, which were fun.

First, we made Earl Grey cake, flavored with the tea. Apparently bergamot is orange? Who knew. I don’t like the tea but had the cake somewhere (possibly New Zealand) and enjoyed it and since have tried Earl Grey ice cream and enjoyed that as well. There were three parts: the cake, with tea inside, then a syrup of tea between the layers, then a frosting between the layers and on the outside. The frosting was super difficult, involved a double boiler and meringue that never meringued, but it still tasted fine. The finished product was pretty tasty but probably won’t try it again.

The second was ice cream bread because why not. The recipe is: 1 cup melted ice cream, ¾ cup self-rising flour, bake at 350°F for 30 minutes. That’s it. We used butter pecan because they cautioned against using something with chocolate bits in it. I thought it tasted lovely and was great because it was super easy. Parentals weren’t impressed.

Both were accomplished with significant help from familials and I was quite pleased with both.

There’s really nothing else going on for me.

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I’m just adding a little note here to reiterate how much I value knowledge. Never before have so many people had access to so much information. Two caveats: people don’t always deal with information well (ex. fake news ect.) and some areas of knowledge have been largely lost (ex. traditional history/culture, languages ect.).

Even so, I can’t handle it when people sometimes exclaim about people being on their phones and stuff all the time. Yes, there are problems with it. Of course there are problems. But imagine an average peasant on Hispaniola in 3 BCE and compare even to a dumb American today–without effort of recall, we can acknowledge entire continents that people in history didn’t even conceive of. This says nothing about how we deal with that information but still.

I don’t know really what I’m trying to say. Value knowledge, I guess. Count your blessings. The rising tide of enlightenment, if you will, truly does lift all ships.